


Make Me Live

by TeaCub90



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxiety, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Couch Cuddles, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Kissing, Love, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 03:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaCub90/pseuds/TeaCub90
Summary: ‘I’ll get over it,’ he manages. ‘Honestly, angel – I’ll get over it, I will. I just – I need…’ He shakes his head, frustrated with himself, feeling utterly, utterly selfish. ‘Exposure therapy, you see.’ He gives a smile, a broken kind of sob. To think he always feltsafehere.In which Crowley struggles and Aziraphale comforts him.





	Make Me Live

* * *

They hold each other on the sofa in the corner of Aziraphale’s shop, the battered but beloved piece of furniture brought long ago at an auction for a few pounds, kept up-to-date with a combined strength of low-key miraculous frivolity and sheer nostalgia.

Or rather – to put it more bluntly, or at least as blunt as a double-edged sword that’s been swaddled in cotton-wool just for kicks (they did that once to an obnoxious knight after they saw him kicking a dog, it was _hilarious),_ Aziraphale holds Crowley. Holds him close to his chest, murmuring soft words into his ear, his arms gathered around him in the same manner one might valiantly attempt to keep a breaking tree together, one that’s cracking right down the middle, tumbling apart piece by broken piece, nothing more than a convenient little bit of firewood to blister.

It’s not Crowley’s first time back in the shop; not the first time he was back here since he stood among licking flames and falling, broken volumes lost to heat – but it’s the first time he’s done _this;_ fallen into Aziraphale’s arms, wrapping himself around him like the snake he is, feeling the reality and reassurance of tartan beneath his fingers, clutching the front of his friend’s shirt for dear life, or at least dear discorporation.

‘Are you alright, my dear?’ Aziraphale asks; his voice is low, cool, worried and Crowley can only shake his head. He’s not, he’s _really_ not and they both know it; he actually feels as though he wants to be sick, could be sick – his hands can’t stop shaking and there’s this great big…cavernous _thing_ inside him, his stomach, his chest, full of nothing but thick, choking smoke full of cruel sparks, warming his throat with the threat of bile. 

‘I thought they’d found you,’ he whispers; wants to explain, needs to explain, past the huge heaviness scratching at his throat. Aziraphale’s eyebrows raise in clear concern and he nods, runs a thumb over the corner of one of Crowley’s eyes, listens. ‘Hell, I mean. Hastur, he’d – I _essssscaped_ him to come and look for you. He’d _threatened_ you,’ he says it with the slightest, slurring hiss, anger creeping into his tone. ‘And that’s why I – I wanted you to come with me. I didn’t want them to get to you.’

It’s a confession; one of the most honest one he’s made in centuries and watches those bountiful, blue eyes blink, soft on him for a few seconds. Then, he takes the hands currently clutching at his front – and Crowley chides himself for this, for wrinkling Aziraphale’s clothes, knows he’s being so stupid, so needy – and cradles them in both his own; raises them to his lips and kisses them, his lips rich and reverent on Crowley’s knuckles, on his skin.

‘You thought it was hell-fire,’ he murmurs, looking up, and Crowley can only nod, the smallest affirmation falling from his lips. ‘Oh, Crowley.’ He lowers his hands gently, as though placing down one of his precious books and puts both hands to his shoulders instead. ‘Oh, my darling – you poor, poor thing.’ With a brush of the fingers, he makes Crowley look up, his beautiful face worn down with worry.

‘That didn’t happen, my love,’ he assures and Crowley nods; should know this by now, should have this tapped into his stupid, traitorous demon brain, but _still…!_ ‘Lord knows it was completely devastating when you told me about the fire, but it was just an accident. And look, it’s all here,’ he adds, in a gentle attempt at optimism. ‘Adam brought it all back for us.’

He tears his gaze away from Crowley’s to look reverently around his bookshop, the expression of a man inside his personal cathedral. Crowley sighs at the angel’s use of pronouns, however accidental – how can this place be any part _his,_ if he can’t step inside anymore without stumbling? – and drops his head to stare at the bare shred of space between them, feels the angel sigh in turn before two palms cradle his face, lift it back up to look at him again and he’s kissed, once, so gently, a soft press and stroke of the hands down his neck and over his shoulders, marble-blue eyes fixed so kindly on his face._ Come back to me. _

‘And I’m here,’ he adds, reassuringly. ‘I’m right here, my love. And I’m certainly not going off anywhere and leaving you again.’

Crowley smiles a little, a wet flicker of a thing – reaches out blindly and laces both his fingers together behind Aziraphale’s neck. A hand sweeps down his back, over the dip of his spin beneath his t-shirt, causing him to shiver a little closer and he glances to his right, where both their jackets and his glasses lie discarded over the spare chair, the coat-hook for once almost completely empty.

Says much, doesn’t it, he considers, impossibly angry with himself, leaning in towards Aziraphale – Aziraphale who’s grazing his forehead, his cheeks, his temple, with his lips, over and over, doing his best to soothe, to calm.

‘Everything’s alright,’ he says again, a puff of breath against his hair and Crowley can only close his eyes. ‘It’s all alright, my darling.’

‘I know.’ Worn down by the sheer, heavy scale of his own anxiety, he ducks his head into Aziraphale’s shoulder as though hoping to hide; to shelter himself from the shadow he can see, as he looks around the undamaged shop – another version of himself from weeks ago, running around like a lunatic, a floor failing beneath his feet, walls threatening to crash in around him in a taunting finale of burning words, pages around him falling like tarred feathers.

‘I _knew,’_ he squeezes his eyes shut, feeling his own shame even as he admits it. ‘I realised – after about a minute – it wasn’t hellfire at all. Demons can…_sssense_ that sort of thing, or – should be able to, at least.’

Aziraphale chuffs a little, keeping a palm against his cheek. ‘Well. You’re no ordinary demon, my dear.’

Crowley chuffs at that, a coughing sort of laugh that shudders his shoulders, his fingertips tracing the satin back of Aziraphale’s waistcoat. Case in point, he supposes. Aziraphale just lets him get on with it, dips his head to rest against his own, gentle hands stroking his elbows. The look on his face is the same one Crowley saw on the airfield, facing down the Devil himself: gentle in its determination; wise with the knowledge of thousands of years; and utterly, utterly brave, magnificent with his flaming sword and ready to fight. The memory weakens him all over again; such a sudden, unexpected change in the angel from his well-meaning, holier-than-thou role as the everyday worrier, the eager beaver determined to love the world and everything in it even when it’s just people throwing stuff at him; the one who fretted for centuries about hanging out – _fraternising_ – with a demon before slowly coming around to the idea anyway.

And now look at them. He knows he’s being a complete fool – knows he should do what the humans do when they’re in this state: go for a walk, drink a glass of water, meditate under a tree or shout at his plants or _something_ – but he can’t bring himself to let Aziraphale go, to let him out of his sight. The last time he was stupid enough to make that mistake, he was left floundering through fire, desperate and determined, begging for his friend to answer him with the promise of another chance. 

And when the feeling hits – oh, when it _hits._ It plunges Crowley sideways, sends him sprawling over Soho pavements, his head racing against all the things he’d tried to hide from the angel ever since that day at the airbase; collapsing straight into Aziraphale’s arms as he smelled the cloying thickness of it, the smashing echo of the flames he had willingly walked into, Hastur’s threat crashing through his head like cymbals. The fear that they’d skipped over him and moved straight onto the angel; the belief that they knew exactly where to hit him hardest. Where to_ burn_ him.

Aziraphale shushes him, rubbing their noses together.

‘You came back for me,’ he remarks softly, perhaps praise, or some attempt at distraction. ‘Twice.’ His teeth and tongue form around the word like the first beautiful notes on a flute, or the first gracious patter of fingers over the string of a harp. Crowley bites his lip, because yes. They had argued, he had walked away and then he had returned and – well. Same again, really.

‘You came looking for _me,’_ he counters after a moment, unable to help the slight challenge that slips back into his voice despite himself; recognising it, Aziraphale chuckles. ‘Not _really _an accident that you ended up in that bar.’

‘Oh! Is that where you were? I thought it smelled rather funny. But, yes, I suppose I felt that…you and I weren’t quite finished.’ He says it with a sort of sheepish chuff, the kind of reining laughter that usually holds back all the other things he wants to say. That Crowley wants to say – that he could never finish with Aziraphale, despite all the times he’s tried; that they’ve both tried, always in vain. They _always _come back to one another, in the end.

Aziraphale says it this time, though; cups Crowley’s face and proclaims it, gaze gentle: ‘I missed you.’

Crowley nods; the movement shifting Aziraphale’s hands but not dispelling them – he knows. By _everything,_ does he know.

He’ll feel the embarrassment of this later, he knows that much, but right now he’s_ weak_ with it, weak with the fact that Aziraphale has proven himself to be the closest thing to a home over the centuries and that the almost-last thing he said to him was some stupid dismissal on the phone. Before that, the hysterical, unconvincing lie that he would go away and forget him – only to wind up grieving into the bottom of a bottle, existing on a plain believed to be, essentially, Aziraphale-less… Well. Frankly, he can’t. He just can’t. It may just be the thing that kills him in the end where holy water failed to do so.

(No-one could forget Aziraphale, _ever)._

He sags into Aziraphale’s arms, hides his face in his elbow, lets himself be cradled, breathing into this body that was discorporated – the fate they both fought so hard to avoid over several centuries, often apart, sometimes together – and fought its way back to him. That sheer sight of him, recreated on the airfield at Adam’s bidding, leaping back into being, all bowtie and ridiculous tartan.

Had they not been trying to save the world; had he not had his hands full wondering how exactly to defend Adam’s three innocent friends from the Horsemen of the Apocalypse; and had Heaven and Hell not been breathing down their necks above and below, he would have gone straight to Aziraphale’s side there and then and made clear his intent never to take the angel for granted ever again.

As it was, he could only feel the simple, collapsing relief that a child must feel whenever their parent resets something precious that they believe to be broken and take in the angel in his beautiful, unburnt entirety, transported safely within the form of Madam Tracy.

‘I’m going to kill Sergeant Shadwell,’ he mumbles into the angel’s elbow because thinking on the rather singular medium whose body Aziraphale inhabited for a few hours inevitably means that that insufferable bastard is never too far behind.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Aziraphale rebukes with a chiding little shake. ‘The sergeant is very happy with Madam Tracy and she thinks the world of him.’

‘Can’t think why,’ Crowley mutters mutinously against Aziraphale’s waistcoat; Aziraphale huffs, crossly.

‘I think she’ll have an extremely positive effect. He certainly won’t go around discorporating any more demons, that’s for certain. Besides,’ he adds, watching the doubtful hitch of Crowley’s lips as he raises his head to rest his chin on his chest, the temptation to teach the ex-Witchfinder some sort of lesson for daring to rob him of his angel for an entire half-day still lingering, ‘I spent a whole afternoon in that good lady’s body, I’m extremely invested in her future prospects. She’s quite the remarkable woman.’

‘She mistook me for a client, once,’ Crowley mumbles, momentarily diverted; Aziraphale’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘It’s fine. She gave me a biscuit when she realised her mistake, helped me back out of the leather jumpsuit and everything. Makes a good coffee, I’ll give her that,’ he adds and Aziraphale blinks, several times – much like his old, ridiculous computer taking forever to boot up – before evidently deciding not to comment, simply slipping his hand into Crowley’s instead.

‘I still think it’s rather remarkable how you and I were both in contact with Shadwell for nearly fifty years without the other knowing,’ he exclaims softly, after a moment of shared peace; Crowley nods with a bit of a sigh, nuzzling into his shoulder distractedly.

‘It is a bit, yeah.’ He wonders, suddenly, if his first meeting with Shadwell coincided with Aziraphale’s, that same night in Soho in 1967. Would it have been before he gave Crowley the holy water, or afterwards? Did Aziraphale go off, needing to take his mind away from what he had just done and simply…bump into him? Take up the man’s cause as a diversion of sorts after giving into the request that Crowley had made over a century ago?

They’ll talk about that at some point, perhaps. But for now, he’s got other things on his mind.

‘I can’t have you risking your life,’ he says it, says the words from five decades ago that the angel said to him in the Bentley before handing over that unexpected thermos. Remembers the surprise that flared with the words; the casual assumptions of responsibility for him in the angel’s tone. Nobody had taken any real responsibility for him since he Fell; at least, nobody who lasted. He still recalls wondering if this is how the angel felt, that night in the church with the Nazis, or the Bastille; the surprise of help, of security and assurance coming in the form of someone whom you least expected.

‘Please,’ he practically begs now and it’s raw; it’s not the first time he’s said it to the angel, but this is a little more complex than trying to prevent truly rubbish magic tricks. ‘Please, angel. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. You saw – well, you didn’t see, but _I _saw – how quickly it all burned. At least get some sprinklers,’ he adds; can sense, rather than see, the furrow of Aziraphale’s brow – apparently, sprinklers ‘don’t quite agree with the cosy aesthetic he’s trying to establish here’ and ‘look really rather peculiar.’

‘I have a fire-extinguisher, darling.’

‘From 1982,’ Crowley complains and Aziraphale immediately turns to frown at the never-used implement, a faded, almost-forgotten red in an equally forgotten corner.

‘Is it?’

‘Mm.’ Crowley leans into him, voice hoarse against the angel’s neck. ‘Lots of health and safety issues right there, aren’t there? Legal loopholes to jump through should the council ever miraculously remember about your lack of income and the fact you’ve been here since the French Revolution.’ Despite himself, he grins a little at the angel’s clear _harrumph._ ‘Be a shame if you were endangering your customers’ lives by not using the proper safety precautions now, wouldn’t it?’

‘The books would get wet!’

‘And you can’t just miracle them dry again?’ Crowley crooks an eyebrow up at him; gets a shifty, argumentative _well-I-suppose-but-REALLY_ sort of expression in return. ‘Please, angel. I can’t…’ He cuts himself off, shakes his head, all humour fading. ‘I can’t go through that again, I can’t, I just can’t. Please.’

Immediately, the fussiness crinkling Aziraphale’s face melts away and he reaches out to cup Crowley’s jaw again, tongue working behind his teeth.

‘Alright, my darling,’ he murmurs finally. ‘Alright.’ With his free hand and the smallest sigh, he clicks his fingers and like budding flowers, three sets of sprinklers pop out through the ceiling at various points throughout the shop, like trusty lifeguards and Crowley, still resting against his shoulder, lets out a huff, something falling away, relieved just to_ see_ them there.

‘I suppose you’ll want me to put in one of those new-fangled alarms, too,’ Aziraphale murmurs, running a hand over Crowley’s hair, but it’s not unkind. It’s the exact opposite, in fact. ‘Though I shouldn’t be so rude about them, really. They save a lot of lives, don’t they, those devices? It’s wrong of me to say such things.’

‘I’ll buy you the batteries,’ Crowley offers hoarsely, throwing in a hopeful look. Aziraphale nods, rubbing Crowley’s cheek with his thumb, as they simply take a moment to just look at each other, the angel’s knuckles carefully tracing his cheekbones.

‘Crowley,’ he says his name with a particular kind of effort; wets his lips and treads with care. ‘You know, you don’t – you don’t _have_ to be in here if it upsets you. The shop, I mean.’ He gestures, unnecessarily. ‘You really don’t.’

Crowley’s heart, or something like it, sinks. There are quite a few things on Planet Earth that mean the world to Aziraphale and his bookshop is definitely right there at the top of the list; so much so that he stalks potential customers and offers them custard creams and those posh oval kind of Jaffa Cakes as opposed to the purchase of one of his precious volumes. His extremely reluctant parting from a first-edition Housman in 1995 instigated a week-long period of mourning, and a great deal of drinking of wine brought with the money (plus half-a-dozen episodes of Friends, hiccoughing and giggling by turns into his Cotes-Du-Rhone). And yet it’s, too soon; the walls judder too close to his sides like a cube squeezing in around his chest; the walls still far too hot with recent memory.

He’ll drive a burning Bentley into the wild; he’ll willingly step into hellfire to save Aziraphale’s life – but he can’t take one step into the bookshop without collapsing.

‘I’ll get over it,’ he manages. ‘Honestly, angel – I’ll get over it, I will. I just – I need…’ He shakes his head, frustrated with himself, feeling utterly, utterly selfish. ‘Exposure therapy, you see.’ He gives a smile, a broken kind of sob. To think he always felt _safe_ here.

‘Oh, Crowley,’ Aziraphale despairs, pushing back his hair one side, his palm a comforting, reassuring weight against his scalp. ‘Crowley, look at me.’ And when Crowley does, gently captured as he is by him, he speaks softly, so softly.

‘Crowley – you mustn’t do this to yourself,’ he tells him, the kindest kind of chiding there is. ‘You mustn’t – not if it’s hurting you. I would never make you come here. We can leave right now, if that’s what you want and go somewhere else. We could even go abroad, have a holiday!’ he shrugs, pulling ideas out of nowhere in much the same way he’s always attempted to pull ribbons out of a hat. ‘We’ve saved the world after all, I think that means we’re due a little rest– and maybe we could go somewhere nice and cold, I hear Antarctica is beautiful this time of year, if one doesn’t consider global warming. We could even go and meet some penguins. Find some polar-bears.’

His babbling fades away as if he’s strolling off down a long dark tunnel; his hand continues to card, focused and familiar, through Crowley’s hair.

‘You love the shop,’ Crowley mumbles, held between his hands. Aziraphale’s expression flickers in something like pain and he kisses his forehead once, slow and soft.

‘I love _you,’_ he counters, quietly fierce. ‘And I would _never_ make you go anywhere you didn’t want to go. I promise you, Crowley. You don’t have to come back in here, not until you’re ready. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you inside at all,’ he adds, eyes drifting away for a moment. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear. I should have been more considerate.’

He speaks with distraction, self-rebuking, as if he’s somehow to blame for all of this and Crowley swallows, feeling utterly caught. The last few weeks have essentially consisted of him suggesting plans that involved the pair of them being very determinedly _elsewhere_ in London, the theatre, lovely new restaurants, a beautiful cruise on the Thames, rather than simply just…_here._ It had been fun, the two of them wandering arm-in-arm around a city that was still standing as summer drew to a close and the world kept turning following the Armageddon that wasn’t; a break of time, a rest, freedom from their respective sides.

But then eventually a nightcap was suggested and Crowley couldn’t think of a reason to say no, or even an excuse, not when he and the angel have both been trying so hard not to lose each other, not even for a minute and he had stood by the entrance to the shop with a tumbler of good amber whiskey that the angel had handed him with a huge, happy, oblivious smile and he had gripped it so tightly, it had cracked.

He’s been coming here since the French Revolution. He once had a nap here, in 1799, just to annoy the angel, to see him sputtering with outrage – ‘I didn’t open this shop to serve as a bedroom for you, Crowley – and stop using _Hamlet_ as a pillow, you terrible fiend, Will _signed_ that!’ – even as he considered this sleep thing to be an interesting development. He walked by constantly during both World Wars 1 and 2 to ensure the place was still standing; sometimes watched from across the road as Aziraphale bustled about within, leaving promptly before the angel could sense his presence. When they’d started talking again in 1941 after the church incident, he dropped by on the regular with a bottle of this or a snaffled chocolate bar of that, or an invitation to the theatre of cinema. He wheeled in on rollerblades in 1999 with a cup of tea from Starbucks as a present. He’s got drunk here so many times; rolled around on the floor with takeaway cartons, ignoring various recommendations of books the angel threw at him, ever the optimist; dozed on the sofa every now and then, an Indian throw tossed over his shoulders, his head resting on many a volume of the various, collected works of good old Shakespeare.

The simple thought, the very prospect, of not being able to _be _here at all – of smelling smoke, chasing him thickly, in a place he’s been comfortably coming and going from since before the 19th century – is unbearable.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmurs, the word rare and deeply ashamed on his tongue; Aziraphale blinks, looking very startled and then incredibly sad.

‘Crowley,’ he scolds softly. ‘My dear, you have _nothing _to be sorry for. Nothing at all, I promise you that. You just need patience and a little time – and we have all the time in the world. I’d give you a thousand years, if that’s what you needed. _Two _thousand!’ he adds with a flourish and a smile; one that crinkles a smile out of Crowley in turn, allowing himself to be reeled in as Aziraphale wraps his arms around his shoulders in a cuddle.

Suddenly, he feels incredibly tired. 

‘You’ll be alright.’ Aziraphale’s strokes his fringe back. ‘It’ll all be here and ready when you are.’ He presses his lips to Crowley’s hair; something in Crowley _gives, _the need to collapse after being held rigid by his fears for so long utterly overwhelming, and in the next instant they’re curled up on the sofa in a pile of rather nice, exceedingly soft blankets, a pillow beneath Aziraphale’s head and Crowley himself curled up against his chest.

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale comments, stroking one of the blankets, a light tartan pattern that's not unlike one of his bowties. ‘These are rather lovely. Where did you find them?’

‘They’re from my place,’ Crowley replies a little sheepishly, unable to fight a small sense of pride just then at the angel’s admiration. ‘Recent purchase. Suppose you could say the world nearly ending kind of made me…take stock, a little.’ And they’ll look friendly and inviting whenever he has Aziraphale over. ‘I’ll take them back with me when I go. Don’t want you using them as a fire-blanket.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Aziraphale exclaims, running a hand down his back and kissing his scalp. ‘Perish the thought.’ He runs his fingers reverently over the fabric. ‘You have _excellent_ taste, my dear.’

‘Thanks, angel,’ Crowley murmurs, burying into his chest, closing his eyes.

He’s still so _aware_ of it all; the books sitting innocuously on the shelves around them, the roof almost reassuringly high above their heads, the undamaged innocence. But he also feels grounded; like he can _actually _take the reality of what’s around him. Can smell the sweet mist of Aziraphale’s cologne, rather than the thick, fiery smog that once hazed over his eyes – can feel hands on his back, his shoulders, drifting over him in clean comfort, chasing away the recollection of grimy sweat; the forceful pelt of water that knocked him off his feet.

For the first time, he thinks he might _just _be able to do this. That perhaps he won’t barrel himself through the doorway in future, alarming the angel, in an attempt to _just get over_ feeling scared of the place and making himself worse in turn because all it does is take him back to that terrible moment of pulling up in front of flames, that frantic search for Aziraphale – but one step at a time. One step at a time.

‘Sleep, my love,’ Aziraphale murmurs, running a palm over his hair. ‘I’ll be here when you wake, I promise. And if you like, afterwards we can go out somewhere. Anywhere you’d like to go.’

_He understands, _thinks Crowley with a sagging relief. _He understands and he’s still here. _Wonders, really, how he could have even braced himself for anything else.

‘Just here’s fine,’ he manages, truthfully, patting Aziraphale’s chest for good measure. And then, exhausted, shattered by the weight of his own overwrought brain and more secure in Aziraphale’s arms than he would be anywhere else in the world, he finally closes his eyes and he rests.

*


End file.
